Colaborative Project on L2 Writing with the University of Gottingen: Negotiating Academic Identities: Students' experiences of academic writing in an era of Internationalisation of Higher Education.

The University of Göttingen International Writing Centre and the London Metropolitan University Writing Centre are engaged in a research project to explore the student experience of negotiating national writing traditions, an important issue given the increasing internationalisation of Higher Education environments in Europe. Our original goal was to explore tensions between the rhetorical and cultural requirements of English and German national traditions of academic writing.  This remains a focus.  However, the practical nature of our daily work means that we have so far focused in large part on L2 (students writing in English as a second or additional language) issues, though we are keen to see these as not separate from broader issues about writing in particular language traditions.

The goal of our research is practical: What can and should we be doing as European teachers of writing in an international environment? The project aims to reveal, from the student perspective, particular sources of confusion and to produce research-based guidance and resources for teachers of academic writing and academic staff to help students negotiate the demands of writing in conflicting traditions.  Underlying all of our research has been a programme of exchange – with London Met student writing mentors visiting Germany and teaching Göttingen  students and Göttingen  writing centre staff visiting London to help train London Met writing mentors.  This has been accompanied by on-line tutorials between Göttingen  students and London Met peer writing mentors.  

To start our research project, a London Met Writing Mentor,Sara Cannizzaro, visited Göttingen in May 2009 and taught two workshops on academic writing in English academic writing traditions for German and international students who were advanced in academic writing in English in their subjects (Social Science and Science). These workshops were followed by on-line tutorials between four of the workshop students and London Met Writing Mentors. The Writing Mentor who taught the Göttingen workshops was herself an Italian postgraduate student who had herself faced these issues of writing in a different language and academic tradition. At the start of October 2009, one of the Göttingen Writing Consultants, Ella Grieshammer, taught a workshop as part of the training for Writing Mentors at the London Metropolitan Writing Centre.  During the autumn semester, London Met Writing Mentors who attended the workshop have written reflections on this workshop and how it relates to the actual experience of working with L2 students in the Writing Centre.  

Katherine Harrington and Peter O’Neill from London Met joined Melanie Brinkschuelte and Annett Mudoh of Göttingen in leading a round-table discussion of our work at the European Association of Teachers of Academic Writing conference in Coventry in June 2009.  Peter O’Neill and Melanie Brinkschuelte will also present this work at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Louisville, Kentucky in March 2010.